Thursday, September 23, 2010

Deaf victim of sex abuse suing pope, 100,000 children in prostitution in the US

also: A Dreamy New Era For Fish - Experiments with LSD-25

Deaf victim of sex abuse is suing pope, and going public with his story for the first timeEditor’s note: A one-hour CNN special, “What the Pope Knew,” will air Sept. 25 and Sept. 26, 8pm and 11pm ET. This story is drawn from that exclusive report.By Scott Bronstein CNN Special Investigations Unit September 23rd, 2010

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin – Terry Kohut has kept a dark secret for nearly 50 years. Now he is breaking his silence, becoming a key figure in the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church and the growing controversy over what Pope Benedict XVI did about it.When Kohut was barely a teen, and for years afterward, he says, he was sexually molested and assaulted by the headmaster and priest of the school where he lived, St. John’s School for the Deaf, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What occurred there is one of the most notorious cases of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.Kohut was not alone. From 1950 to 1974 the headmaster of St. Johns, Father Lawrence C. Murphy, raped and molested as many as 200 deaf boys, according to court and church documents.

Kohut has now filed the first sex-abuse lawsuit against the Vatican actually naming Pope Benedict, previously known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as a defendant.Ratzinger was once head of the Vatican’s powerful CDF, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, charged in certain circumstances with investigating the sexual abuse of minors by priests. And though church records show the abuse by Father Murphy was brought to the attention of Ratzinger and the CDF years ago, a church trial against the headmaster was stopped and he was allowed to remain a priest.The Vatican’s “policy of secrecy” in abuse cases, and its “directives to conceal the sexual abuse of children” by priests, the lawsuit says, helped bring about the abuse of Kohut and others by Father Murphy....

Steven Geier and Carl Nelson were also deaf students who say Father Murphy sexually assaulted them repeatedly. They say Father Murphy would prowl the dorm at night, visiting boys in their beds, raping and sexually assaulting them. He would also routinely assault and molest his victims in one of the church’s most sacred places – the confessional – church documents show....Minnesota attorney Jeff Anderson is the lead lawyer in Kohut’s lawsuit. Anderson has filed hundreds of lawsuits for sexual abuse victims of priests, and has obtained a massive trove of internal Vatican documents to build his case against the pope. He says numerous abuse cases show that Vatican officials all the way to the top, including then Cardinal Ratzinger, did little to help the victims, and were mostly interested in protecting the church from scandal....Groups of boys tried to tell local police and even the local District Attorney in Milwaukee about what was being done to them, according to Kohut, Geier, Nelson and others CNN interviewed. But no one ever believed their story, and local police even drove them back to the school, returning the boys to Father Murphy.After years of allegations and reports of abuse, and threats of lawsuits, local bishops finally moved Father Murphy in 1974 to remote northern Wisconsin. There, more abuse allegations later surfaced.http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/23/deaf-victim-of-sex-abuse-is-suing-pope-and-going-public-with-his-story-for-the-first-time/

Meet Katie: She Was a Prostitute in Seventh GradeSeptember 22, 2010Every year, at least 100,000 children are forced into prostitution in the United States. Portland, routinely voted one of the most livable cities in the country, hides a dark secret: It is a national hub for child sex trafficking, police and victims' advocates say. Meet Katie -- a 13-year-old girl who says she was plucked from the street to dance at a strip club in the seventh grade.http://abcnewsradioonline.com/headlines/2010/9/22/meet-katie-she-was-a-prostitute-in-seventh-grade.html

A Dreamy New Era For FishExperiments with LSD-25 and other hallucinogenic drugs indicate it may be possible to spook trash fish up—and out—of angling waters Robert H. Boyle March 30, 1964Howard Loeb, senior aquatic biologist at the New York State Conservation Department Fish Laboratory in Livingston Manor, is feeding fish LSD-25 and other hallucinogenic drugs ordinarily used in treatment of the mentally disturbed, and if the experiments work out successfully—which they show promise of doing—their application will have a wholly revolutionary effect not only on angling but on commercial fishing as well.

....Several years ago Dr. Harold A. Abramson, Director of Psychiatric Research at South Oaks Psychiatric Hospital in Amityville, N.Y., chanced to read of Loeb's work on carp poisons, and he offered a suggestion: use LSD-25, a hallucinogenic drug derived from d-lysergic acid, originally found in the ergot fungus that grows on rye. Discovered by a Swiss pharmaceutical firm nearly two decades ago and later patented, LSD-25 is a potent tool in mental-illness research. It enables patients to recall events that occurred in very early childhood and that may be at the root of their difficulties. The drug is perhaps best known to the general public because of the psychological effects it brings about. Colors take on great depth, music is physically felt rather than heard and happiness or frustration is often extreme. It produces in a normal person a state believed to be similar to schizophrenia.That is why Dr. Abramson started experimenting with LSD. He is one of the supporters of the theory that schizophrenia is caused by a chemical imbalance in the body. If he could use LSD or another derivative of d-lysergic acid on a laboratory animal to bring about simulated schizophrenia, then find another chemical agent that could block this simulated case, he would have a strong clue to the mechanism involved in clinical schizophrenia.....

Loeb first began testing with LSD-25, then, with the help of an American pharmaceutical house, Eli Lilly and Co. of Indianapolis, started testing other compounds made from d-lysergic acid. So far Loeb has tested some 40 drugs supplied by Lilly on carp, goldfish, golden and common shiners, blacknose dace, yellow perch, pumpkinseed sun-fish, white suckers, bullheads, brook trout and brown trout. With the exception of the trout and the bullheads—which swim to the surface—the fish pop up to the top of the water, swim backward and often go into a stupor. Goodness knows what kinds of hallucinations carp have—perhaps they dream they are gefilte fish—but they become noticeably lighter in color. Transferred to a fresh tank, affected fish appear intoxicated up to several hours, then become darker in color and start to respond by sight to people and approaching nets. Left in the original test tank, the fish snap to after several days. "My idea in experimenting with these drugs," says Loeb, "is to find out which ones bring the fish up the best with a modest dose and then become nontoxic the quickest."...."Loeb," says Dr. Abramson, who marvels at the progress, "is doing real pioneering. He has the foresight to explore the unknown. He's doing important work in experimental biology, and I wouldn't be surprised if in studying fish he came up with a contribution of definite value for our work on mental illness."http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1075800/index.htm